Creepy Gmail
“On the surface, [Google's new web-based email service] sounds like a wow idea. You get one gigabyte of storage and don’t pay a copper cent in return… But all the encomia that’s greeting the announcement of ‘Gmail’ distracts attention from the fact that there’s yet a hidden price you will still pay… The Google contextual advertising system automatically scans for frequently used terms in order to serve up ads… For instance, if you e-mail a friend to play tennis this weekend, the system would lock onto the keyword and send you a relevant advertisement from a tennis gear supplier. Sounds like a mind-blower, if you’re the marketing director for Wilson Sporting Goods. Truth be told, however, this is the kind of technology advance that gives me the creeps. Contextual advertising has been around for years. Type ‘dominatrix’ as a search term, and you’ll find enough hard-core bondage and fetish ads to keep you occupied for quite some time. But search is one category; your e-mail is quite another. Do you really want Google snooping so close to home?” — News.com (US)
Because contextual ads are served up by software programs that will scan your email automatically, Google insists that nobody — no person — will be reading your email or otherwise invading your privacy. You can write “dominatrix” in your email and see ads for fetish services without anybody quite putting together the fact that you, as an individual, harbor a certain perversion — says Google. And in a certain sense this is true, since the average user will be one of a googleplex of users and odds are that the little things you like to keep private will be of the utmost indifference to the machines handling your email.
However, in another sense this is a slightly duplicitous attitude for Google to take. Users don’t really touch the internet without leaving trails — logs of traffic, destinations, clicks. Google’s ad servers certainly track all kinds of ad statistics, as anyone with an AdWords account knows. In principle there is no reason that, say, law enforcement couldn’t subpeona the ad logs for some individual’s account.
But then again, would they really learn anything from the data? It’s not like terrorists will be so dumb as to use all manner of obvious bomb-related words in their emails, or that kiddie porn collectors will trigger ads for East European child pornography sites (which can’t advertise on Google anyway). That type of information will always be obscured by code words: terrorists will call bombs “eggs” and thus trigger grocery ads, and pedophiles will call kiddie porn “art” and thus call up ads for Impressionist posters.
From a practical standpoint, the privacy of Gmail accounts is no more violable than the privacy of snail mail — and anyone with a teapot can steam open an envelope. Besides which, isn’t a gigabyte of free storage worth the extremely slight potential for invastion of privacy? Do you realize how much free storage that is? If anything this is a windfall for people involved in illicit activity, since Gmail suddenly opens up another extremely easy and relatively anonymous way to swap files. With a gigabyte of storage, traders can easily use accounts to email each other MP3s, video games, or kiddie porn. Or you could even open up an account, email files to it, then give the username and password to your ring of associates. (It will be interesting to see if Google disallows simultaneous logins, which would somewhat lessen the appeal of doing this.)
In short, privacy advocates may whine, even though they usually have nothing to hide, while the lawless will go ahead and make all kinds of creative use of Google’s new service.
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